New SI Unit Announced

Jacques Bouillon, president of the General Conference on Weights and Measures, today announced the introduction of a new SI unit describing the degree of loathsomeness displayed by an individual or organisation. The new unit is the "savile" and is logarithmically scaled from 1 to 10. Some early ratings include Piers Morgan (8.3 saviles), Ed Balls (4.6), John Terry (5.1) and Adolf Hitler (4.9). Negative ratings are also calculated, with Kate Middleton rated at -7.3 saviles, Clare Balding at -6.8 and Stephen Fry at -0.3.

M Bouillon (1.4) was unable to enlighten journalists (6.2) at the press conference as to the source of the new unit's name but further details should emerge when the EU (4.7) debates the introduction of the savile next month.

A savile rating saves space in blogs or tweets. For example, a discussion concerning our elected representatives such as Eric Pickles (4.3) or Jeremy Hunt (6.6) or indeed members of the House of Lords (2.3) such as Conrad Black (7.9) or Jeffrey Archer (9.2) can be much simplified by using saviles.

Jacques Bouillon, president of the General Conference on Weights and Measures, today announced the introductiuon of the "inverdale", a new SI unit designed to measure misogyny and sexism. Early ratings include Boris Johnson (6.3 inverdales) and Henry VIII (3.4). M. Bouillon cited the successful introduction of the savile last year and suggested that a compound unit, the "inversavile" would be proposed to measure misogynistic loathsomeness. John McCririck rates 8.7 inversaviles. Asked as to the inspiration for the new unit's name, M. Bouillon said, "I think it is important to recognise those who have reached the pinnacle in their chosen field, whether it be science, the arts, misogyny or whatever. Mr Inverdale is undoubtedly a master in his field. As you may know, we introduced the "wally" some years ago as a measure of crass stupidity and Mr Inverdale currently has a rating of 8.2 wallys on a scale of ten. We may consider a double compound unit, the "inversavilewally" at a future date in order to clarify the system."

Sad nitpick note: such a unit, like temperature in degrees Celsius, Kelvin or Farenheit, or frequency in Hertz, should (as a proper noun) have a capital letter.

We should also recognise multiples and sub-divisions, like the Milli-Helen - the degree of female beauty required to launch precisely one ship.

I presume the Savile is being introduced by the EU (or rather, the ISO) as a more elegant substitute for the essentially transatlantic unit, the "like", which is a simple, non-divisible, binary classification more suited to less sophisticated society in the USA.

With regard to those correspondents requesting further information concerning SI units relating to art, the two most commonly used are the emin (general detritus) and the hirst (manufactured tat); once again, the compound unit is available: the eminhirst. Care should be taken, however, when combining the eminhirst with the inversavilewally: the combined form, eminhirstinversavilewally, is eassily confused with the eminent eighteeth-century philosopher and pederast Eminhirst Inversavilewelly.